NASA selects crash site for aged satellite

Published: Sunday, June 04, 2000

GREENBELT, Md. {AP} NASA engineers picked a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean for the deliberate crashing of a 17-ton satellite that has provided a wealth of data for astronomers over the past nine years.

Engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center started Tuesday to send signals to the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory to perform a series of rocket firings to drop the satellite into the ocean. If NASA operations go as planned, the satellite was expected to hit the Pacific between 2 and 3 a.m. today.

The satellite changed astronomers view of the heavens after providing proof the whole universe was bathed in gamma rays, an energetic form of light invisible to the eye and hardly detectable on Earth.

After a gyroscope failed, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided to deliberately crash the spacecraft while engineers still could control it.

An analysis showed that if NASA did nothing, the craft would eventually fall on its own from space, with a one-in-1,000 chance of killing someone on Earth. The craft's orbit carried it over some of the most populated areas of the world, including Mexico City, Miami and Bangkok, Thailand.

The controlled re-entry was projected to occur in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, about 2,000 miles southeast of Hawaii. Shipping and air traffic in the area were instructed to avoid the area.

The project, which cost $670 million, originally was supposed to last two years but was extended repeatedly when NASA engineers found it to be extremely successful at gathering information.